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LAPTOP info on COMPAQ ARMADA 7400 needed.

I just bought a Compaq Armada 7400 laptop, and need some info on it for upgrades, like memory and hard drives and what accessories It can use. Bought it on EBAY, and it works great, but it didnt come with a manual. I went to Compaq but their link for the online manual doesnt work. Does anyone know of a place where i can get a copy of it? PLUS any other info on this laptop? Also? is there any site that has a LAPTOP forum like we have here for general computer stuff?

It takes standard SODIMMs, but I don't recall the total memory capacity.

You can use just about any laptop HDD that you like, I think the largest drive I've ever seen installed in a 7400/7800 is about a 10GB or so. You will just have to remove the old hard drive from the propreitary carrier that Compaq uses on this series of laptop.

I would just keep trying Compaq's site to obtain the online manual, they are still converting some stuff over from the HP merger, and periodically some older documentation has been unavilable.

Thanks BART, I will keep trying, just tought there might be some other source for DOCS.
As for the hard drive, do i need a special proprietary disk to format the laptop drive if i replace it? It is the p2-366 version with a 10 gig hard drive. Was thinking of putting a 40 gig in it and upgrade the memory to 256, it has only 64 megs memory now.
I also need to find a floppy drive for it.
Its a great laptop from what i can tell. Only glitch is It came with the DVD drive, and I cant seem to get it to work with my DVDs, (comes up with errors, thinking it doesnt have enough memory) although the it reads CD roms ok.
Do you know of any laptop user forums ????
Any info greatly appreicated anyone on this new found GEM?

You can get floppy drives fairly easily on eBay, a buddy of mine has a 7800 that he has bought several components for there, they are part of the same series of laptop, and just about anything made for a 7800 will work with a 7400.

You don't need to buy a proprietary drive for the laptop, you only need to remove the old drive, take apart the carrier and remove the old drive, and install the new drive. Your laptop is capable of a maximum of 256MB of RAM, I can't find any documentation from Compaq stating the largest supported drive. While it of course won't cause any damage to try a larger drive, it might not recognize it and it appears the latest BIOS revisions do nothing to allow the use of larger drives.

laptop and new hard drive....

Thanks for the link BART.
So Do you know if I could add a 40gig hard drvie to the 7400?
My only concern is, being this is a factory refurb, with no floppie drive. PLUS I have no support disks. I do have licensed win98se CDs though......how would I do about installing and getting all the driver to make it work properly? Sorry if this all sounds dence, BUT, I've been building desktops for many years, this is my first laptop, and not used to not having a floppy drive for the bootdisk.

I honestly have no clue if a 40GB drive would work in that laptop or not. I took a look at a buddy's 7800 today and he had a 20GB drive in it that worked just fine. As I said, no harm can be done from trying the larger capacity drive, the system just won't recognize all or part of it if it isn't supported.

Re: laptop and new hard drive....

Originally posted by Cyberg7 Thanks for the link BART.
So Do you know if I could add a 40gig hard drvie to the 7400?
My only concern is, being this is a factory refurb, with no floppie drive. PLUS I have no support disks. I do have licensed win98se CDs though......how would I do about installing and getting all the driver to make it work properly? Sorry if this all sounds dence, BUT, I've been building desktops for many years, this is my first laptop, and not used to not having a floppy drive for the bootdisk.

Appreciate any insite,
Thanks again,
Cy

Compaqs usually use a diagnostics partiton to access their BIOS so sometimes just throwing in a new HDD and using fdisk, etc. loses the F10 or F1 bios hotkey and you can't get to it - not usually a big problem but you should be aware it happens sometime

and Bart is right except that if the bios doesn't support the total capacit of the crive, you can use ez-bios (for Maxtor and Quantum) or ez-drive (WD drives) they ahve an iverlay that will let you use the full capacity of the drvie even if there is a bios limit

and other than getting the darn cover off the latpop, they ain't much different.......

Parts for my 7400.
Thanks guys, I'm in the process of bidding on a floppy for my laptop on EBAY. Once I corral one of those, I will see what I can find on Pricewatch for a 40 gig hard drive. Still alittle in the dark as to how I will get the drivers for it, since my computer is a refurb. BUT guess I can look into that link for Compaq restore disks, although I've never used one.